Ms Care Center of Dekalb

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weighed the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses were with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility has earned near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Turning to another strength for this facility, we gave them one of our more favorable grades in our long-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 98.63637 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the last category, this facility also received a first-rate short-term care score, with a B+. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is more often than not a reliable measure of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.